Finding the Right Shapewear for You

I was asked to help find shapewear for one of my lovely readers. She has problems as she’s a 38DDD (or a 38E in some places), finds that many garments roll down and create unsightly bulges, and also that her breasts sometimes escape underneath the underwire of her bra.

How to Find the Right Shapewear For Your Body

1. If your breasts come out from below your bra – the band is too loose – but you think it can’t be because your bra gives you rolls of back fat? The band of your bra should sit horizontal around your rib cage – often when it’s too loose it rides higher up between your shoulder blades and still creates back rolls, and then lets your breasts escape. The underwires should sit firmly against your ribs, the underwire should not poke into your breast tissue near your arm, but should in fact sit behind where your breast finishes, under your arm. Get all my bra fitting tips here.

2. As our bodies are different lengths, each brand is cut longer or shorter – so if some shapewear is too long for your body or too short, it won’t sit right for you. The other day I was with a client finding a formal outfit for a big ‘do’ she was going to and I got her a selection of shapewear to try on – even though trying on these highly elasticised garments is exhausting, as she put it “like wrestling a pig” her words, not mine, the effort was worth it – we could compare what worked on her body best.

3. You could try for one that has an inbuilt bra – though I’ve never seen them over a DD cup (but if anyone knows of a brand that does – please leave a comment), but even though I’m a 12G/32G, I recently bought a Nancy Ganz 16D shaper with an inbuilt bra that fits my breasts, and still has enough shaping for me.

4. Brands to try:

Bella Bodies – they do shapewear that has straps to hold it up so it won’t roll down, and they also do shapewear that goes over your bra to hold in everything

Nancy Ganz – some of these are great – they have lots of sucking in power

Thanks Imogen, I have a very long body (should have been a lizard…) I am going to investigate these. Spanx is for the shorter to average body I think. There's another brand that's popular in the US. I think it's called Liposuction in a Box or some such thing.

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